SYDNEY: Australian cardiac researchers have added weight to international concern about the magnets in iPhone 12 handsets potentially interfering with pacemakers and implanted defibrillators.
Apple has implanted magnets inside iPhone 12 handsets that allow them to attach to external chargers and accessories.
The Heart Foundation and the Australian and New Zealand Cardiac Device Advisory and Complication Committee (ANZCDACC) both called on iPhone 12 users with implants to be wary of how close they carry iPhone 12 to their bodies. Placing it in a top shirt pocket is risky, they claim.
“The electromagnetic waves generated by some devices can keep ICDs or pacemakers from functioning properly,” a spokesperson told The Australian.
The foundation said that, while there have been few, if any, clinical incidents related to mobile phones impacting ICDs or pacemakers, new iPhone 12 devices and their accessories which feature MagSafe functionality contain more magnets than previous models.
Paul Gould, chair of the ANZCDACC, a subcommittee of the Cardiac Society of Australia & New Zealand, said an experiment showed an iPhone 12 interfering with a Medtronic cardioverter defibrillator.
“The devices have a magnet function or (reed) switch in them… and that magnet function turned off the defibrillation capacity of the device, so it was just a pacemaker and not a defibrillator,” Gould said.
